Operation Starfall
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| [//louise_s_d/@louise.swinsondavis/+] |
Being an account of the events of Operation Starfall, a Vigilant mission on the planet of Ishim, during the siege of its capital city, Ul-Hiyar (an event during the Delphurnan War). Data compiled from interview transcripts, declassified personnel files, military archives, pict-recordings and survivor testimony.
***
A blueprint for assassination
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| [//Inquisitor Lord Leong-Cassar. Following the Conclave of Jiam-Tertial, Inquisitor Leong-Cassar petitioned the High Lords for resources and decisive action against the false Primarch and Partisan forces. Following passionate debate it was there, on Terra, the partisan chapters were declared Traitoris Perdita./+] [//peter_h/@pdh_neglected_fruits+/] |
Over the course of the broader conflict, Lord Inquisitor Leong-Cassar had ordered the prosecution of numerous clandestine Vigilant operations: assassinations and classified wet work alongside surveillance; raids; ambushes; and interference. Killteams like Hound, Headtakers and Mournful had given Leong-Cassar a series of notable successes, with strategic assets seized, informants planted, and sabotage set in motion across the Morqub and Heliopolis Sectors.
However deeply engaged the Ordo Astartes' Killteams were, however, the Inquisitor was acutely aware that they could do little more than delay the Partisan advance as rumours of a returned Primarch continued to spread inexorably across the Sectors. These rumours fuelled uncertainty and instability – and more and more riots, protests and insurrection were occuring on even those planets and systems that had declared explicitly for the Orthodoxy. Curtailing or ending the False Primarch's ambition would perforce rely on one aim – one that weighed heavily on Leong-Cassar's mind: an attempt on the life of the Abomination, the figurehead that so fired the dark ambition of their erstwhile brothers, Volnoscere himself.
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| [//+identconfirm: incerto– 86% probvalue=true+] [//edward_r/@death_of_a_rubricist+] |
Operation Starfall was devised with simple intent for a singular purpose: a swift and decisive decapitation strike, a coup de main intended to inflict the maximum degree of damage in the minimum amount of time. While simple in concept, the execution was to prove a convoluted affair, the particulars being repeatedly adjusted and reformulated due to the vagaries of the expanding Delphurnan Front, where the advancing Pentarchy and Extinction Fleets were meeting with stiff resistance from the Inheritors, Riven Lords and substantial Silver Stars forces.
At the heart of the Partisan resistance here was Ishim, homeworld of the Marines Orcinus, or Red Fish. The Red Fish had stabilised a second line on the Front by deploying a substantial proportion of their strength to support and fortify the worlds of their Delphurnean League, a mini-Empire in all but name. Nevertheless, as the key to the region, Ishim held huge armies of the disciplined and capable men and women of the Delphurnan Commonwealth Militia, spearheaded by the remaining core of the Chapter proper. The Pentarchy had identified the world as a priority target; forcing the Partisans and Orthodoxy into a direct trial of strength. Thus far, the Orthodoxy had secured planetfall, but at appalling cost. The war here was escalating and becoming a grinding, brutal siege.
Leong-Cassar considered the success of Starfall would depend on several factors converging to create a slender opening in which to act. One such factor would be the means to transport a specialist Vigilant squad into Volnoscere’s near vicinity. To this end, Inquistiorial tech-adepts, under the auspices of Cantopres Ram, had been set to work to blueprint, engineer and trial prototype devices. In their esoteric relic-vaults, the adepts tinkered with archeotech unknown to the wider Imperium; the work bearing fruit in the form of a handful of experimental teleportation packs that could transfer the bearer – with meticulous precision – from orbit to surface without the need for a homer, or for more cumbersome battle-plate.
***
With a means of infiltration secured, the next challenge was to identify the quarry's location. Thus far, the False Primarch's movements had proven nigh impossible to track, with the Red Fish's disciplined and tight-band vox-network proving difficult to break into. Only limited fragments of actionable intelligence were percolating through to the Ordo Astartes; which had gradually allowed the Ordo Astartes to narrow their focus from a subsector down to a system, then planet – and finally, a city.
After concerted effort, the encoded Orcinus ciphers were finally cracked, revealing that 'V' was to liaise in person with a coterie of important Partisan individuals. Alongside the advent of new intelligence from an undisclosed operative working within the Partisan’s ranks, this set the stage for the operation. They knew where he was: The Berabii Fortress, in the north-easterly quadrant of Ul-Hiyar. A heavily fortified stronghold protected by a thick hull of ferrocrete and metalwork, it was occupied by substantial proportion of the Red Fish's Ninth Company and an unknown number of Silver Stars – too many to fight through.
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| [//Even at the height of the Siege, Red Fish patrols could be relied upon to demonstrate all the discipline and cool-headedness for which the Chapter was famed+] [//lloyd_r@eightfold_disiple+/] |
Despite the efforts of the Partisan Chapters and their allies, the Inquisition believed that the Abomination's personal presence was a sign that Partisans felt that the tide of the siege – and of the broader Delphurnan war – was turning inexorably in favour of the Pentarchy. Leong-Cassar assessed that the meeting must be a personal audience by the Primarch to bolster morale, or prepare future actions as the Partisans prepared to withdraw from Ishim. Given this assumption, it seemed inconceivable to the Tacticae of the Ordo Astartes that Red Fish command had not prepared an evacuation plan for their honoured ward. This would be Starfall's opportunity.
Reasoning that the Primarch would have foreseen the dismay with which his retreat would be greeted by the defenders, Leong-Casser calculated that only when the Berabii Fortress itself was about to fall would Volnoscere be escorted through the crumbling streets to an evacuation point that remained tantalisingly out of reach of Ordo Intelligence. Only once the point was identified, and the elusive target was confirmed to be on the move, could the kill-team make their attempt, with the Abomination – hitherto unassailable – exposed at last.
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| [//matt_b/@warlords_collective)/+] Each of the Killteam knew that speed and precision would be of the essence upon reaching the surface, as their teleportation flare would be detected swiftly by the traitors’ prying auguries. After locating and eliminating Volnoscere, they would fall back to rendezvous with the Death Eagles in the Southern District, where they had fortified a front within the city limits. |
***
Kill-team Starfall operatives
Operation Starfall was categorised as a crimson-hazard military exercise, but Leong-Cassar judged the risk to be worthwhile, and a cost that any Emperor-abiding warrior would be willing to bear. Sensible of these most dire odds, the kill-team members nonetheless volunteered. Their accumulated martial prowess – previously demonstrated when they fought together during the Gurro and Bastion-Sextant campaigns – would offer them a fighting chance. This band of unlikely brothers were to be the God-Emperor's radiant speartip, driven into the irreverent and dark heart of heresy.
Sternguard Veteran Gantuga, Storm Lords
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| [//josh_s_d/@warlords_collective)/+] |
A weathered old warrior and veteran of the War of the Beast, this heir of the Khan was selected for Operation Starfall for the specific purpose of providing suppressive cover to the other Vigilants. For this role he bore a Mark IV Heavy Bolter with a sword-pattern power bayonet.
Vanguard Veteran Salvatore, Angels Sanguine
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| [//louise_s_d/@louise.swinsondavis/+] |
For Salvatore, as for any of the Angels Sanguine, secondment to the Vigilants bore great prestige; it was regarded as a form of pilgrimage in honour of the Great Angel. Armed with chapter relics, Salvatore aided the kill-team with his close-quarters ferocity and experience of vanguard assault actions.
1st Company Sergeant Makarios, Raptors
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| [//will_b/+] |
Makarios’ history is as uncertain as his chapter’s. Some records connect the name to a survivor of Isstvan V. The next account of his existence was his induction into the Vigilants as a close-quarters specialist; he fought in the Starfall mission armed with a lightning claw and plasma pistol.
Veteran Qaidu Khan, White Scars
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| [//matt_b/@warlords_collective)/+] |
As a veteran of the first brotherhood, Qaidu operated as a Kharash warrior, carrying out shock attacks as part of a task force. Qaidu was sent to the Vigilants to undertake a tour of duty, where his specialism made him an obvious choice for membership of the Starfall kill-team.
Captain Arngrim, Blackshield
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| [//toby_h/+] |
Recruited in the wake of the War of the Beast, Arngrim rose swiftly through the ranks of the Executioners, attaining command of the 2nd company. Disgraced in the eyes of his chapter, he was appointed to the Vigilants, and sought redemption as the kill-team leader.
***
The memory of a city
Before Leong-Cassar's audacious plan could come to fruition, the Pentarchy would first need to bypass Ishim’s vast defences in order to make planetfall. Fortunately, Leong-Cassar had a scheme that had long since been set in motion. The Inquisitor surveyed a holograph on the bridge of his ship as his subordinates went busily about their duties.
Above the bustle of war, the pulse of a chronometer struck down towards the appointed hour with inexorable certainty, echoing along the ship’s corridors. Then, at 016-40 sidereal time, the ticking ceased and Ishim’s defensive orbital fortress – the Ring – exploded. The vast edifice had been incremently compromised over time, the Orthodoxy's sabotage slowly poisoning the planet’s outer defences. Weapon arrays, shield generators, power networks, all switched off in a flurry of detonations. Only now would the Red Fish – and the broader partisan movement – realise how far and deep the arm of the Orthodoxy reached, and only now, unwilling to allow him to die with the city, would the Silver Stars and the figurehead of the entire rebellion be forced into the open.
As the Ring ruptured, leaving Ul-Hiyar open to a surface assault, the Ordo craft bearing Leong-Cassar and Killteam Starfall translated into realspace at Ishim’s Mandeville point, and the mission counter commenced. Creeping forward, cloaked amidst the impossible electromagnetic debris of the dying ring, the craft reached range on the third day. As Ishim’s great sun began to sink behind the Ojureg mountain range, it sent a bruised shadow spilling over the city.
Hanging in Ishim’s low-orbit, Leong-Cassar continued his watchful vigil, searching for any signs of activity around the Berabii fortress. Beside him, Inquisitorial tech-savants hovered over cogitators, processing manifold data-streams, from biometric and aerial surveillance feeds to satellite and thermal imaging that could penetrate the heavy dust cover of siege warfare. Meanwhile, poised for battle in the ship’s humming teleportarium, Gantuga, Salvatore, Qaidu, Makarios and Arngrim waited – with various degrees of patience, but united in their sense of duty – for an order that might never come.
...And then – an alert chime generated by a spurt of motion outside the fort. Scarlet thermal pips forming up and fanning out in the direction of the landing fields: precisely what Leong-Cassar had anticipated. With the astropathic warp-warding ready, and the kill-team primed for transit, Leong-Cassar issued the order with customary conviction: Deploy. Moments later, the team blinked out of existence, and Operation Starfall had begun in earnest.
***
[//Fragments of the subsequent planet-side events were captured by battle-brother Gantuga’s gun-mounted pict-recorder and are summarised for the purposes of this mem-file.+]
[//matt_b/@warlords_collective)/+]
The Vigilants materialised in the memory of a city. All about, the suffocating dust of war shrouded the landscape, seeping through edifices which had once stood steadfast against the harsh elements of the continent. Building facades – once storefronts, eateries, and hab-blocks – were pocked by the scars of combat that had been and gone. Far away, the din of battle flared; the distant tread of titanic war machines quaked the very foundations of Ul-Hiyar, its skeleton trembling and groaning in reply to the call of the Legio Validus war horns.
The details of the ensuing engagement have been lost, but what is certain is that the Vigilants teleported into an ambush. A squad of Red Fish, their Silver Star attaché and an understrength platoon of Leaguesmen emerged from a ruined Ishim townhouse that overlooked the teleport groundsite, and opened fire. They had somehow been shielded from surveillance. Classified Ordo Astartes records later determined that the only other person to know of the Vigilant’s intended teleportation site was their agent within Volnoscere’s ranks. It is unclear whether, and in what manner, this operative was compromised, and whether their betrayal was wilful or coerced. It is evident that all five Vigilants survived the ambush, and that once they had despatched the Partisan marines, they received a vox-hail from Leong-Cassar, informing them that there was other activity outside the Berabii fortress, this time moving directly away from the Vigilant’s location.
However the ambush had been achieved, and whether it was intended as a coldly calculated diversion by Red Fish command or not, the ambushers had severely underestimated the killing power of the Vigilants. The ploy had, however, certainly slowed Killteam Starfall down, and it had bought the Partisans precious time to evacuate Volnoscere. Despite the loss of two of the operatives' displacer fields, Gantuga’s secondary heart, and a good deal of blood and ammunition, the Killteam pushed on, unrelentingly, in pursuit of this final lead.
Cutting across the city streets in haste, they arrived at the seat of Ishim’s democracy: The Capitol Hall. The historic edifice, an icon venerated by the people of Ishim, shuddered under the pressure of its many wounds. It had been brought down – as Master Enoch had chillingly declared the entire host of heretics would be – in punishment for the Partisan’s trespass.
Further along the plaza they found a Vexillum-Imperialis lying torn and abandoned in the dust. Alongside it slumped the rigid corpse of a Leaguesman, reaching out with a pallid hand to shield the fallen banner in the final tortured moments of his existence. His name, like the rest, would be purged from the annals of official record. To Starfall, the Caputmori emblem was a perversion of the sacred Aquilla, with the regal eagle heads usurped by a hubristic human skull. With an expression halfway between sneer and snarl, Gantuga crushed the Caputmori beneath his boot before moving on.
***
The confrontation
Without encountering any further hostile activity, the Vigilants reached their target in an anoymous district square, dotted with gutted commercial properies, rubble and the scattered tables and chairs of the planet's pre-war existence. Here, at the edge of the city, they found their prey. It became clear to Starfall that the ambush was no accident of war; that it had indeed been a decoy to afford Volnoscere and his retinue the chance to escape without contest. But where they had expected the quiet of a covert exfiltration, they were instead met by a rising tumult.
Rounding the corner, Starfall saw them: mothers, fathers, the young and the infirm. Some were wounded. Others cradled supplies, or treasures, or infants. A tide of fleeing civilians headed to the westerly mountain pass, where they sought some semblance of refuge in the unforgiving Ojuregs. In their congested flood to evacuate the fallen city, the horde formed an unfortunate screen between the Vigilants and their enemy.
A force of Partisan marines, primarily Red Fish and Silver Stars – but damningly including individuals later identified as agents of the Marines Saturnine, and the Jade Talons – were grouped on the other side of the square, waiting for what appeared to be a segment of the floor to open up before them. Inquisitorial records indicate that this was a previously undetected entrance to a subterranean passage, which in turn led to some form of clandestine evacuation bunker. As Makarios confirmed the presence of the Abomination, towering above his coterie, the Vigilants did not waver from their purpose: to prosecute the mission to the best of their ability; to do whatever it took to maximise their chance of success.
There was only one route to Volnoscere: straight through the crowd. In other circumstances, perhaps this would have given the Astartes pause. In this essential mission, however, Starfall charged directly for their adversary.
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| [//matt_b/@warlords_collective)/+] |
The humans’ frail forms offered no resistance to the storming tread of charging Astartes. Those who could not move aside in time; those trapped in place by the dense press of evacuees, were trampled, bones shattering underfoot. Their names would – supposedly by the hand of the Primarch himself – be added to the toll of civilian casualties incurred during the siege; part of what became collectively referred to by the Partisan population of the Sector as the victims of the 'Ul-Hiyar Massacre'.
The Partisans formed a defensive cordon in front of the False Primarch as the Vigilants fired upon them with all the explosive might they could muster. Gantuga broke off from the rest, hunkering down behind a ruin to provide suppressive fire, his splintering hail of specialised heavy bolter rounds tearing through ceramite and flesh alike. Salvatore and Makarios unhooked experimental plasma grenades and hurled them into the traitor’s nest, unleashing searing orbs that melted through armour and bone alike. The exchange of damage tore shreds of armour from friend and foe. With the thunderclap of ceramite on ceramite, the erstwhile brothers collided in a blur of blades, bullets and blood. Despite the swift ferocity of their strike, and the key element of surprise, the Vigilants were nonetheless outnumbered, three to one, by angry, invigorated Astartes.
Makarios fell first. Riddled with rounds from the traitor’s volley, he swung again and again, his lightening claws sparking with coruscating energy as he slashed skin and severed limbs. Faced with one too many weapons to evade or deflect, the well-timed lunge of a roaring chainsword hooked into his underarm fibre-bundle cabling, its keen teeth whining as they bit through rubber and metal and meat.
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| [//matt_b/@warlords_collective)/+] |
Qaidu went down second. Cleaving through Astartes in staggering sweeps with his vast power dao, he was eventually outmanoeuvred: one of the Red Fish honour guard driving a polearm into the back of his leg, splitting through his kneecap and forcing him to the ground. A combat knife stabbed into his nape secured the kill.
Forced towards the edge of the combat, Arngrim struck with his power axe in a relentless stream of blows and parries. The Jade Talon barrelled into his side, knocking them both into the support wall of a dilapidated building, where they lay locked in a death-grapple. The building, structurally compromised by the preceding siege, lurched and gave way in a deafening storm of debris. Arngrim and five of his enemies were lost to a sea of stone and dust.
The vicious shock of the onslaught had carved a path to Volnoscere. Salvatore, bloodied as he was by the injuries of so violent an assault, pushed through the opening to engage him. Silently they fought, ensnared in a deadly choreography of thrusts, ripostes and dodges.
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| [//edward_r/@death_of_a_rubricist+] |
As though surprised by his opponent's skill, Volnoscere took a half step backwards; the fractional shift providing the Vigilant with an opportunity he had to take. Alas; an open-handed blow to his side sent Salvatore sprawling to the stone floor, his armour fractured and organs ruptured. In a final insult to Salvatore’s customs, Volnoscere stepped forward, pinning the Angels Sanguine beneath his boot. Leaning down, he ripped away his helmet, exposing a face that only his chapter brothers were meant to look upon. The Abomination raised his immense mace, Monstrance, above his head, and with a face that betrayed neither triumph nor remorse, let it pause there for a moment. In anticipation of the execution? In hope of surrender? None can say.
Wordlessly, and with a sickening crack, Volnoscere slammed Monstrance downwards, Salvatore’s bare head exploding in a burst of pulverised bone and brain matter. Without pause, Volnoscere tossed the helmet to one of his captains: perhaps as a trophy, perhaps as a reminder of the time the Vigilants came too close. Leaving the rest to his Red Fish honour guard, he disappeared along with the other Chapter agents, into the shadow of the underground passage.
Gantuga was the last to die. With his ammo spent, he charged the closest marine, thrusting his power bayonet deep into the heretic’s thorax. Soon after, another of the Red Fish was on him, cutting into the Vigilant’s torso with a thrumming power sword, twisting it in until it punctured his primary – and only remaining – heart.
The last image that Gantuga’s pict-recorder captured, in the hours after Kill-team Starfall had perished, was Volnoscere’s stealth-shielded orbital transport hovering atop the square before dissolving into the gloom of night. A blizzard of ash rained down on our fallen brothers from the smoke-wreathed sky.
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| + While the primary objective was incomplete, Starfall confirmed the physical presence of the figure claimed to be a Primarch. This provide sufficient evidence to damn the Red Fish, their homeworld, and their role in the broader sector's governance. + [//edward_r/@death_of_a_rubricist/+] |
***
Scorched Earth
In the days that followed, the Death Eagles swept the site for their fallen, recovering the bodies of Gantuga, Salvatore, Qaidu and Makarios. Entombed in rubble and tortured earth, they had found Arngrim, his vitals critical. His eventual fate is beyond the purview of this account and is recorded in a separate mem-file. With the clean-up complete, all friendly troops retreated out of the city to allow the Legio Validus war machines to conclude the siege, and expunge the stain of Ul-Hiyar, with cataclysmic city-levelling barrages of fire that ground Ishim’s capital – and its history – to mud and ash.
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| [//After the events of Operation Starfall, the Red Fish's fate was sealed+] [//mike_f@eatdrinkdeath+]] |
Ultimately a failed mission, Operation Starfall would have further-reaching repercussions than Lord Leong-Cassar could have foreseen. Whilst Volnoscere had escaped unscathed, he was evidently shaken by the encounter. The kill-team had proven beyond doubt the dire threat that the Vigilants posed, for soon after Volnoscere formed the Marines Mendicant; this force was to be a direct counter to the Ordo Astartes operatives – one that would irrevocably alter the nature of Shadow War engagements for the rest of the War of the False Primarch.
***
“No fanfare, acclamation nor decoration would befall our warrior-brothers; such is their noble resolve. To do what must be done, even when nobody is watching – this is the mettle of the Vigilants”
[//Attr. Lord Inquisitor Leong-Cassar/+]